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Process automation in the manufacture of composite materials for a more efficient industry

IK4-IDEKO has participated in a seminar on
composites that held at the AIMPLAS Technology Centre in Valencia on February 14th.

At the event, the researcher Javier Vallejo presented
a technology for improvement of automated carbon fibre composite manufacturing
processes for the aeronautics sector.

The search for increasingly
light, rigid and strong materials has become a basic objective of industry, especially
in fields such as transport. But, together with this demand for mechanical
performance, the industrial sector has redoubled its commitment to
competitiveness, and this involves diverting more resources to the research of
new technologies that increase efficiency in the manufacturing processes of
these composite materials.

Within this
field, IK4-IDEKO, the Basque technology centre, specialises in the development
of new automated processes for the manufacture of composites from carbon fibre
aimed at the manufacture of structural parts in the aeronautics sector.
In order to exhibit the latest advances made in this field, IK4-IDEKO has played
a major role in the "II Composite Seminars 360: Advantages
and Opportunities of composites in transport" which held on February 14th
at the AIMPLAS technology centre in Valencia.

The IK4-IDEKO
researcher Javier Vallejo was one of the speakers with the paper "Automated
and Efficient Manufacture of Composites from Dry Carbon Fibre" introducing
the Automated Dry Material Placement (ADMP®) technology.

This
development notably improves the current automated carbon fibre composite
manufacturing processes for the aeronautics sector and allows new solutions to be
explored, both for the manufacture of wing skins of an aircraft and for the
stiffeners of these skins. In this regard, Vallejo presented a project carried
out jointly with the machine tool manufacturer DANOBAT for developing a new
stiffener preform solution based on an adaptive mould.

IK4-IDEKO's
research work on composites is aimed at innovating in the development and
improvement of the manufacturing processes for these composite materials. The
commitment to efficiency and competitiveness has led the Basque centre to
configure machinery/prototypes and devices capable of
automating manual operations and, in this way, consolidate the presence of
these materials in certain sectors and even introduce them in other new ones.

To carry
out this work, IK4-IDEKO has a material processing research laboratory that
includes the technologies and operations that form part of this process, as
well as an automated cell for glass fibre composite manufacturing and another
for advanced composite manufacture based on dry fibre cloth.

The AIMPLAS
seminar provided information on the latest innovations on the mechanical
properties and performance of composites, as well as its environmental
sustainability, manufacturing times and the challenges that face sectors such
as automation, railway and aeronautics.